


ships of the line, ships of the morn

by kathleenfergie



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canada, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Newfoundland, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:44:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3566795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathleenfergie/pseuds/kathleenfergie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he understands what the bar flies sing about. understands the sea shanties and drinking songs; the rough working hands and the flannel on their backs. everything smells like salt and rain here, but he smells different. smells like wood and leather and loneliness. it’s a thing we’ve got in common. </p><p>oneshot. au.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ships of the line, ships of the morn

**Author's Note:**

> i'm from canada (ontario), and i love canadian folk music and folk music in general, and i went to a folk concert on the weekend and since then have had a vision of like an au where emma finds killian in newfoundland and just like a relationship happens. i like it a lot. i don't think there's anything too canadian that nobody would understand, but like just for reference, the newfoundland cod fisheries collapsed in the 90s and that basically caused the economy to plummet. newfoundland's famous rum is called 'screech' and i've had the chocolates, they're really good. wellies are rainboots (wellingtons) but that's more of a british thing. 
> 
> what really made me want to write this was the song "ghosts of cape horn" by gordon lightfoot, but covered by trent severn. look it up, it's really good. 
> 
> but yeah, i hope you like it because i really enjoyed writing it.   
> don't own anything.

he calls them the fortunate ones, the ones that were able to stay after the fisheries collapsed. one of the first things he ever told me was not to mention the cod, if i didn’t wanted to be stuck listening to drunk middle aged men talk about their kids moving out to the prairies and city provinces. it only happened once, and they clutched their beers to their chest like they were the very children that left them, and i pitied them. but i understood, the loss and the heartache and the bottle being the only thing that helps. 

he gets it too, he told me. the both of us don’t really belong here, but it’s better to be an outsider with a friend than an outsider with no one at all. he blends in more, his accent helping him along, but i sound like metal and money and the fast pace of the mainland. 

he’s from an island too, so he understands what the bar flies sing about. understands the sea shanties and drinking songs; the rough working hands and the flannel on their backs. everything smells like salt and rain here, but he smells different. smells like wood and leather and loneliness. it’s a thing we’ve got in common. 

he says that i smell too clean. my leather is fake and my shampoo is too fruity, but the loneliness is there. he doesn’t mention that part though, just tends to his large boat that feels heavier than the entire ocean between him and his ghosts. mine are just a few provinces and states away, much more accessible. 

he has the luxury of his ghosts not remembering him, though, being dead and all. mine know what they did. or at least i like to think that they remember any of it. i want to think that he knows the eleven months i spent alone and afraid, swollen out of my mind. want to think that my parents drove away from that highway ditch thinking about what they did. 

they don’t, probably. they’ve all forgotten. i can’t though, and he understands that. he’s the only one i’ve ever told about my son, and he tells me about his dead wife and her murderous husband and his murdered brother. 

somedays i want to tell him no one is going to take me away, but it’s not something i can't promise. can’t promise that nobody’s going to jump out of the shadows and rip out my lonely heart. it doesn’t even feel like it’s there most days, but with him it beats a little bit more. when he keeps close or gives me his jacket as the mist hits, i feel warmth and it’s nice. 

he stays on his boat most nights, the cabin under the deck big enough for a large, soft bed that rocks you to sleep. some nights i let him drag me home from the bar, stumbling my way over the side. i’ve got a room with an old granny and her only grandkid, bussing tables just to prove they shouldn’t toss me out. their diner is cute and enough for me.

she knits me thick sweaters and gives me her lasagna recipes. her grandkid is old enough to go out but the night scares her, so she stays in and makes tea and dances alone in her room. i envy her youth, but smile as i pass nonetheless. 

he comes for coffee mornings he isn’t too tied up at the docks, and laughs at my name tag, a coffeepot in my hand. tells me it gives me a homely look and i serve all the fishermen first before i come back and poor him a lukewarm cup. drinks it black, nonetheless, smiling. sometimes i see his face through the misty lunchtime rush, and we pretend like we don’t know each other, making smalltalk we’d already gone through months ago. 

it’s funny and cute and familiar. he makes me smile, which is dangerous, but he doesn’t claim me or expect anything from me, so it’s alright for now. he buys me chocolates with the province’s famous rum that i hate, but i eat them anyway. hands me a claddagh ring on valentines day that i wear around my neck.

he plays with the chain in the dark light of his cabin, one small lamp casting our shadows across the wood. he bypasses the swan keychain and the circle of diamonds that have made their home on my neck for years. the shoelace that covers my tattoo isn’t mentioned either. i think he fears he’ll become another token that i’ll wear until i die. it wouldn’t be unlikely, but i want to think i can keep him. keep somebody, just this once. 

granny smiles at him when he picks me up for nights out and sneaks pictures when she come, pinning them on the cork board in the kitchen. there’s a couple of him and ruby drinking and laughing, the two looking like siblings. it’s like a family, what i’ve got here, but i never say that out loud. 

he talks about his brother in the early hours, when wet grass sticks to my boots on the journey from the docks to the diner, and i listen because i can still hear the glass in his throat, tearing at his words. i tell him about my son, who i’ve seen in pictures sent every couple years, who has his father’s nose and my dimples. i keep them tucked in my wallet but don’t look at them ever again. 

he had a stepson, back in ireland, who was also killed by his maniac father. it’s all too horrible for me to comprehend somedays, how the man didn’t kill him, only took his hand and left him with awful memories. he still has nightmares, shaking as the boat rocks us both. 

he sings to me in the mornings, playing with my hair, and even though he can’t hold a tune to save his life, it still sounds right coming from him. it’s mostly just folk music i used to hear as a kid from one set of foster parents, but he’s picked up enough of what the locals sing. in the pubs i find myself knowing the words too and for once i don’t think about running. 

i tell him he should go home someday, go back and see if he can forget. he says he won’t leave without me and so we sail across the atlantic. it takes a couple of weeks but it’s an experience, and i learn fully how to be a crew member. he calls me his pirate queen, and i tell him to exchange his prosthetic for a hook, calling him captain in the cold mornings. 

ireland is beautiful and he visits graves and cries into stones and grass that is too green. he tells liam about me, hugging my middle as he does. he walks past the house where is happened, still for sale after all these years; finds the intersection where his brother was shot. he talks to friends he left behind. 

he doesn’t want to stay, however, and soon we are back across the water in the familiar harbour. granny cries when i come home and ruby doesn’t leave my side for days. she calls me her sister and i pretend like my eyes don’t get wet. the old fishermen welcome their coffee girl back and tip me a couple extra quarters when the day is over. 

one of his dock buddies who has a boat of his own marries us a couple weeks later and the claddagh ring no longer sits around my neck. neither does the swan, thrown into the ocean when we came back. i frame the photos of my son and mount them to the cabin wall. i thank his brother internally for the large boat when i move all of my things out of granny’s.

the pub goers drink themselves into the ground the night of our simple wedding, buying all of our drinks, pouring rum down killian’s throat. he carries me over his version of the threshold late into the morning, almost dropping me into the harbour. 

i still make the twenty minute track to the diner each morning, and granny starts paying me in things other than lasagna and a room. ruby becomes “auntie” later and she babysits our daughter, taking her out to play in the sand on my shifts. the curly haired little girl comes home to the harbour with her wellies drenched and overalls muddy. the laundromat owner’s know killian and i by name.

in the summers we take her to ireland, but we always come back. we come back to the home where our ghosts can’t find us anymore.


End file.
